Back in January, we bombastically proclaimed 2015 to be the year of DISTRO EVERYWHERE. How exactly are we doing on that? Apparently, fuzzy ideas + sharp ambitions = REAL STUFF HAPPENING. Since then, we’ve given “DistroCamp”-style workshops to 50+ startups in Hong Kong and Taipei, joined up with General Assembly to put on a video marketing panel in Los Angeles, and recently announced a $10 million DistroFund to put our money where your growth is. We’ll also be at 500’s Weapons of Mass Distribution conference on startup growth, giving on-stage talks and doing hands-on growth office hours — the event is TOMORROW. But the purpose of this post was only kind of to blatantly promote and side-mote our various DISTRO happenings. …

We’re proud to announce the launch of “500 TukTuks”, a $10M USD micro-fund focused on promising startups, managed by new 500 investing partners Krating Poonpol and Moo Natavudh. Why the name TukTuks? Well they are small, lean, fast, agile, and dangerous. JUST LIKE STARTUPS. We’re excited to take a trip through the winding roads of Thailand to discover smart, badass entrepreneurs. Why 500 TukTuks? 500 sees an opportunity to invest early and often into the next generation of Thailand’s most promising startups and empower them with best of Silicon Valley’s education, thinking, talent, and money to provide unfair advantage in the local market. 500 will be the first major SV accelerator and seed stage investor in the local Thai market and founders will …

Want to get on the fast track to working at an kickass startup? We’re hosting a Job Fair on Friday, May 8th at our HQ in Mountain View, CA. From 2-5pm, you’ll get a chance to meet founders in our current batch of startups (Batch 13) and wow them with your awesome skills and sparkling personality. In addition to working an early stage startup, you’d get to experience everything that comes with 500’s accelerator program – working out of our awesome office space, meeting tons of people in the 500 family, attending events and fireside chats with big-name founders, and more. “I showed up and instantly felt like I was in the right place. Every person I talked to was enthusiastic and …

Double dang. Can you believe we’re already on our 13th accelerator batch? For those of you keeping track, this is our tenth batch in Mountain View! As always, our companies have all types of founders from everywhere on the globe. There are 28 companies in this group, and 46% of our companies have at least one woman on the founding team. Additionally, 61% of our companies have at least one foreign‐born founder. Countries include: US, UK, China, Argentina, Uruguay, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Estonia, New Zealand, South Korea, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Italy, Brazil, Russia, Kuwait…. <cue… It’s a small world world after all…..> Follow of our companies on AngelList. If you want to join 500 in the future, you’re in luck – Batch 14 (San …

This week, I speak with 500 Distro team members Tammy Camp and Matt Ellsworth. Learn more about our new Distrofund and WMD (Weapons of Mass Distribution), a one day conference covering marketing and distribution hack-tics to grow your startup. For more info visit: wmd.co Love the show? Don’t forget to rate us and subscribe on iTunes!

Mobile growth is something we haven’t talked about enough here on the 500 blog. All that’s about to change with the following monster 500 DISTRO post from our friend Alex Austin at Branch Metrics. Btw, you can catch Alex on stage at 500’s conference on startup growth, Weapons of Mass Distribution — next Friday May 1 in San Francisco. You’ve decided you want to take a stab at building the next successful mobile app business. First off, spend some time and think about whether you’re ready for this. I’d liken the process to running in a marathon followed by wrestling in a sumo match. If you have the energy to make it through the first part, you’re most likely going to be eliminated …

YouTube gets more than a billion uniques a month, featuring “big” influencers with multiple millions of subscribers, “mid-size” influencers who have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and “small” influencers who still boast more followers than some small towns have people. It’s not just YouTube, though. Influencers on Vine, Instagram and elsewhere have aggregated millions of followers on those channels too. So the numbers are exciting, and video is clearly a promising medium for content distribution and growth. But is it really ROI-driven — and affordable — enough for startups? 500 Distro recently partnered up with General Assembly in L.A. to talk about video as a viable growth channel for startups, not just fancy brands with buckets o’ dollars. Our panelists …

500 Startups continues to grow, both in the number of international folks joining our team, as well as individuals elevating into new leadership positions. We’re happy to welcome Elizabeth Yin to the 500 Investment team, where she will be running our Mountain View accelerator program! Prior to joining 500 Startups, she started a company called LaunchBit, which was an adtech company that she sold last year to a larger adtech company. In another life, Elizabeth worked on products at Google and has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan. We’re really lucky to have her. With Batch 13 kicking off this Monday, I caught up with Elizabeth to learn more about her journey, insights and experience working at 500. You’ve …

This week, I speak with batch 11 founder Richard Werbe about his new startup, StudyPool. Check outwww.studypool.com/ to learn how his team is building the modern day Cliffs Notes for everything. Love the show? Don’t forget to rate us and subscribe on iTunes!

500 Startups is proud to announce the launch of DistroFund , a $10 million allocation from 500 Startups main fund dedicated to post-seed, pre-Series A companies looking to scale and operationalize their growth marketing function.

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